By Garda Ghista
Abstract. In February 2002, the Hindu fundamentalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other Hindu fundamentalist religious organizations organized and carried out a genocidal ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the state of Gujarat, in western India. Between 2,000 and 5,000 Muslims were slaughtered, and more than 150,000 were rendered homeless and destitute. To this date, the victims have seen no justice – particularly economic justice – and the perpetrators continue to boast of Gujarat as a laboratory for their plans for the rest of India. Many Hindus as part of their daily puja/prayers now worship the Gujarat Chief Minister, who patronized the genocide, as a god. In the face of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and Christian fundamentalism in the US, the Gujarat genocide looms large in a scenario of global fundamentalist wars. How are we to face this juggernaut of religious fascism, presently manifest in all major world religions?
In His last discourse on this earth, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar asked of humanity the following questions: "How can this problem be solved? How can we check these belligerent parties from implementing their outdated ideas, which may cause the physical disintegration of the country? What should be done? What should be our short term and the long-term policy? The approach should be both physical and psychic. Will simply economic theory do or is something more required? Education is a long-term program. What should be done immediately in the physical and psychic realms?"
